Why?

For years, I asked: “Why?” Why, was I widowed at the age of 40? Why, was I left and abandoned to raise two children—age twelve and ten—alone? Why, was I entrusted to be the guiding light steering them through the uncharted waters of adolescence and their own silent and heavy ebb and flow of grief. A grief that I knew well because it anchors so deeply within the chest and remains hidden for as long as the mind remains unequipped to handle its messiness.

I was 40 years old, a wife, a partner, a mother of two children—ages twelve and ten—and I was living the life of my dreams. It was not a perfect life, but it was a life perfectly created for me.There were challenges and struggles, but also love and stability. Then, at the blink of an eye everything shifted. In a moment I never saw coming, I became a widow and everything that I had known, planned and built had just vanished right before my very eyes.

A new role (and life) was waiting, but I was not ready to accept it. For the most part, I shut down, I ignored and resisted the new life. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t want it, but mostly I didn’t understand it. Why the life that I knew and had comfort in had to vanish?

Learning to re-adapt was a big part of my journey and my understanding. I never really learn how to fully and functionally adult on my own yet here I was not only getting thrown into that very capacity, but I was doing it with 2 sets of watchful eyes observing and learning from my every move. I had leaped from my parents’ sheltering arms straight into the loving and nurturing embrace of my husbands. Their presence and structure had shaped a scaffold for my life. Then without warning it all came crashing down and leaving me left the rubble.

Along with grief came fog. Widow fog is a quite real, yet somewhat subjective, experience that comes after the death of a spouse. It feels like a mental disorientation that makes concentration and productivity nearly impossible. The fog may manifest as forgetfulness, difficulty making decisions or just a general sense of not able to think clearly. For me it was a combination of all the above.

My grief did not arrive immediately or all at once. It came in gradually like when dusk creeps in after a sunset. It was subtle yet dimming to my vitality and presented a numbing of my senses. I was living (mostly for the sake of my children), but I was on autopilot. I breathed, but I did not feel the breath in my body. I moved through time, but I wasn’t living in time. It was like ten years of suspended animation, or a grief-induced pause and a decade of survival, but not really living.

Suddenly I felt a shift. Perhaps it was divine timing. Or the quiet whisper of my soul begging to be seen and freed from my own self-imposed life of captivity. For many years following the death of my husband, I watched friends and loved ones exit out of my life. I felt abandoned, alone and resentful. But in truth, no one ever really left me. It was me who had abandoned myself. I had abandoned the essence of my true self which was merely mirrored by my family and friend who walked beside me.

Or maybe it was the echo of my children’s pain, mirroring my own, that pulled me into this state of consciousness. I had come to the realization that while I was surviving for them, I had stopped living for me.

I also began to see how neurodivergence had shaped our lives—not as a flaw, but as a language. One I had never been taught but was born to speak. This could explain my lifelong sense of feeling “different,” my children’s intense emotions, their brilliance wrapped in anxiety and sensitivity. It offered a new lens—one that replaced shame with understanding. Accepting it as a way of life—our way of life—has brought clarity. What once felt like chaos now reveals a pattern. We were not broken, we were merely being wired for something deeper and unseen.

Then came the hardest truth of all for me to grasp, understand and accept. With this loss, I have to live my remaining days without a partner. No hand to hold. No one to share quiet moments or exciting adventures. No mutual glances over morning a coffee or whispered dreams at night.But instead of the ancient feeling of despair, I felt something else rise. I felt wholeness. I am not half of a whole. I am the whole.

I am a parent, nurturer and guide. I am the protector, the healer, and mystic. I am the flame that still burns after the storm has passed through. Relearning how to live again has not been a grand epiphany, but a series of small, sacred moments:

The first time I laughed and meant it rather than behind an unauthentic, fake mask.

The first time I stood still and allowed the earth hold to me.

The first time I looked in the mirror and know longer saw a grieving widow. Instead I see a strong, resilient woman no longer trapped beneath the grief. I am a mother, the soul, and the seeker.

I will forever be there to guide and love my children through their storms, but it is time for me to release the anchor and allow myself the grace to set sail on my own ship once again. I still ache at times (and probably always will), but I feel the fog lifting. I am no longer lost and confused in the fog because I am now able to see through the darkness.

Sometimes life is not what we expect or able to be controlled. Life is messy, raw, honest, and real. I am starting to see that. I am ready and willing to accept the ebb and flow of life as is and without question. I allow myself step back into the cycle of living and watch it reshape and transform before my very eyes.

The answers never came, but somehow the questions no longer need them to.